Just last night I was having a friendly debate with a couple of friends. Thoughts, ideas, and opinions were flying around. Once our conversation had calmed down, we began to reflect on the benefits of having debates like this one. They are so beneficial because they get you thinking about other points of view and about why you hold the opinions that you do. Oftentimes, we take what we read or what we’re told as fact and it is a good thing to have those thoughts/ideas/opinions challenged – whether by others or through self reflection.
The majority of us are recurrently guilty of this sort of blind agreement. Children are particularly susceptible to this. They tend to take what they read and what they hear (from their parents and teachers especially) as fact. It is our job as educators to teach them to question – to question what they see, what they hear, what they’re told to be fact; it is our job to teach them to apply their previous knowledge, to make a judgement of their own; it is our job to teach them to think critically.
Having students write and represent their (thoughts/ideas/opinions) is an excellent way to teach them to think independently. This is supported by the curriculum through the English Language Arts Prescribed Learning Outcomes C1, C3, and C4. C1 encourages “personal writing for a range of purposes and audiences that demonstrates connections to personal experiences, ideas, and opinions, featuring an honest voice”; C3 encourages “imaginative writing for a range of purposes and audiences, featuring an authentic voice”; C4 encourages the creation of “meaningful visual representations for a variety of purposes and audiences that communicate personal response, featuring development of ideas using clear, focussed, and useful details, and by making connections to personal feelings, experiences, opinions, and information.” I completely agree that the use of writing and representing helps students to express, to extend, and to analyse their thinking. This idea is also supported by Atwell. She explains that “when we help kids focus on craft and their own responses we encourage an active, critical stance” (284).
Another thing that I value as a future educator – something that I believe will also help kids to focus on their craft and that will encourage active, engaged learning and participation – is the value of choice. It is important to share responsibility with your students, to give them the freedom to choose what is important to them and how they want to go about expressing that. A teacher that María Paula Ghisa interviews in her article “Writing That Matters”: Collaborative Inquiry and Authoring Practices in a First-Grade Class “emphasized that writing is not primarily or fundamentally about responding to a teacher prompt, but that children have their own motivations for authorship” (Ghiso 346). It is important to give students authority over their voice so that they feel like writers and not just students being asked to write.
